


Thrown

by SLWalker



Series: Arch to the Sky [17]
Category: due South
Genre: Arch to the Sky, Domestic Violence, Gen, Nipawin (1991-1995)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-04
Updated: 2011-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:13:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1991: Three months into field training, Turnbull and Chase respond to a DV call in the regional park.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thrown

Guy Laurent was hung over.

 _Very_ hung over.

Turnbull sometimes wondered how, exactly, the man could even get drunk, let alone get drunk enough to be hung over, when he was fairly sure that Guy's body had long since hit terminal saturation when it came to alcohol and therefore his seemingly nightly binges should have simply been maintenance. The man apparently knew how to be sober. He was in Depot. But his state most days since arriving in Nipawin was typically drunk or hungover, and Turnbull simply couldn't fathom _why_. It was ridiculous.

"...urk..." Guy said, now that he had finished throwing up in the bushes outside of Turnbull's residence. He spit, then rubbed a hand back through his tangled hair, then straightened up like it had never happened.

Turnbull wished he didn't have a sense of smell. He really, _really_ wished he didn't. "Are you quite finished?" he managed to ask, trying not to breathe as much as humanly possible, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

"I want to go down to the Evergreen."

Curling. That caught Turnbull's attention. The Evergreen was hosting their summer bonspiel. He felt a stir at the thought of it; he hadn't gotten to curl since... Lord, over a year and a half ago. Had it really been that long?

And then he made the mistake of breathing in again and winced at the _stench_. "I have to work tonight."

"Call off."

"No."

Guy shrugged and held out his hand. "Car?"

Turnbull tightened his hand around his keys. Guy was often asking to borrow his private vehicle. Turnbull had driven it from Leaside to Regina, then to Nipawin; many, many miles on the Trans-Canada Highway, sometimes through very remote areas where help was quite a distance away. He wasn't desperately attached to it, but he had made it all of that distance without putting a scratch on the plain white sedan.

He had a feeling that one night in Guy's possession would end up with a burned out husk of a wreck.

"I am not letting you borrow my car."

"Hm," Guy answered, with another shrug. "Give me a ride?"

Turnbull dropped his head, still trying not to breathe, and sighed out. "If you vomit..."

 

 

Guy didn't vomit in the car, but being stuck with him in the vehicle for the five minutes it took to take him to the Evergreen was still an entirely unpleasant experience. The lingering afterscent was more than enough that Turnbull rolled down his window and stuck his head out once Guy was on his way, dragging in summer air and trying to forget that horrible _smell_.

Why the man couldn't simply walk...

"Eat something that didn't agree with you?" Corporal Chase asked, when he stepped into the detachment building.

Turnbull blinked back. "Sir?"

Chase was sipping on his coffee, leaned against the counter, and then gestured with his mug. "You look green." Then he grinned. "Greener than usual."

"Ah... no, sir. It was... was an unpleasant smell," Turnbull answered, coming around the counter to go to the desk he was slowly deciding was his favorite. "Nothing more."

Chase nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer, then went back to his coffee.

Turnbull still wasn't sure what to make of the man. The Corporal's good-natured patience had immediately put him on guard from the moment they met; Turnbull was waiting for the FTO to convert, at any moment, to something more in line with the sorts of instructors he had in Depot. He expected that the moment he let his guard down, he would end up coming under some sort of abuse for doing so, and that the easy-going nature Chase presented would vanish.

Some three months later, and that had yet to happen.

Admittedly, he had not let his guard down in that time, but he had at least stopped dreading every single training scenario, every single call, every single stop. He had not dreaded those because he was worried about _them_ , though -- he had dreaded those because he was waiting for Chase to come down on him. But again and again, the Corporal asked him what they were to do, and again and again the anger he expected failed to materialize. When Turnbull was wrong -- and he inevitably was, on occasion -- Chase just corrected him and they figured out where the mistake was made, then moved on.

Turnbull never made the same mistake twice. And Chase had yet to make... make him _miserable_ about the ones he made once.

Now, they were patrolling on afternoons -- Chase's usual shift -- and while he was still wary, Turnbull was slowly growing to genuinely like and look forward to work, rather than view it with a mix of anticipation and dread. He liked B414, the cruiser that Chase was touchingly devoted to. He liked the way Nipawin seemed to bustle, in a small-town way; something he had never seen before. It seemed everyone knew everyone, and it was nothing like Toronto.

They ended up doing quite a number of things in the course of any given shift, and Turnbull found something on any given shift to appreciate about Nipawin. Even on the hard days.

Now, companionable silence had fallen, until Chase spoke up again, "Ready to go out?"

"Yes, sir," Turnbull said.

 

 

The air was heavy and hazy, and the sun was distinctly golden.

Nipawin was busy as it had been, the fine weather drawing people out. Families returning from swimming. Families heading out to go fishing, the rods flashing dully in the sunlight. People walking, people riding bikes. Children waving at them, in the cruiser.

Turnbull inevitably smiled as he waved back, even on days when he wasn't sure he could muster one. There was wonder in _being_ waved at. Before, he had been near invisible in the world; now, he almost always had someone looking at him. It was not why he wanted to do this job, just an apparent side effect, but it still often boggled him that instead of being the boy to jauntily wave to a police officer, he was now the police officer being waved at.

Sometimes, that thought caught up to him and he had to huff a soft breath out just so he might remember how to _breathe_.

The cruiser was quiet today.

They rarely talked much outside of business. Chase would quiz him, or they would discuss some aspect of applied police science. They would talk about scenarios, and once in awhile, the Corporal would tell him a story about some call he had taken that was unexpected in some way. One of those involved a muumuu and a white-tailed deer. Another had involved a black bear and a campsite. Some involved the truckers that regularly passed through the area from further north and west. Some were uplifting, some were cautionary. They were surprisingly entertaining, as well; Turnbull liked listening, even though he didn't volunteer anything himself.

For the moment, though, they were both lost in the quiet of their own thoughts, surrounded by a very not-quiet town as it moved and flowed in the late summer day. Evening would last for a very long time; the sun wouldn't even set until forty-five minutes before their shift ended, and the twilight wouldn't end until after. It was hot out, even now, and fluffy white clouds drifted high above.

_"Bravo four-fourteen."_

Turnbull automatically turned his head away from looking out, as Chase picked up the microphone. "Four-fourteen, I'm clear, go ahead."

_"Four-fourteen, you have a call of a fight in the regional park, in the campgrounds, two subjects -- a male and female -- and a juvenile. Called in by a witness. Male allegedly has hit female repeatedly flat-handed; no word on the juvenile. Caller reports this happened around site thirty-five. Copy?"_

"Copy."

_"Time is nineteen twenty-two, you are now assigned code three."_

Chase hit the lights and siren, scowling, and everything shifted with the low growl of the 350 under the hood.

 

 

It was not the first domestic complaint Turnbull had been to, but it was the first one they had rolled up on still in progress. A small boy was huddled by a picnic table. A blonde woman was screaming back at a wiry, tanned, brown-haired man. Those milling around were pretending not to watch, all the way up until the cruiser pulled into view; then, apparently bolstered, they allowed themselves to stare.

"--you don't know what you're talking about!" the man yelled, gesturing wildly.

"Deal with her, I'll handle him," Chase said, as he was getting out of the cruiser.

"Sir," Turnbull answered, getting out himself and closing the door with a little more force than necessary.

"I warned you," she answered, after darting a look at the Mounties. She pointed, and her voice dropped to a trembling, angry tone. "I told you that if you did it again, I'd leave."

The man sneered back. "I haven't done anything."

"That's not what the witness said," Chase replied; it was most certainly his no-nonsense tone, flinty and sharp, though very calm. "Step over here."

"I haven't done a damn thing, Mountie," the man said, and that was about the time, as Turnbull came up on the woman, that he could smell the booze in the air. Amidst the sweet scent of summer grass and flowers, it was more than a little apparent. "This crazy bitch keeps insisting that I can't discipline my own kid."

"You fucking liar!" the woman shrieked back, a ragged and desperate note.

"Ma'am," Turnbull said, low and serious; his own business tone. "We're here now. The fight is over. We can't help until we've heard what's going on."

"You can't help, anyway," she shot back, eyes red.

"Of course they can't, because I haven't done anything wrong!"

"Shut up," Chase said, pointing to the cruiser. "Step over there, put your hands on the hood."

"Hey, this is bullshit. You know what? I'm taking my kid, and I'm getting out of here, and you can have that crazy bitch."

He made it all of two steps, before Chase moved to grab him and chaos broke loose.

The woman screamed; the child broke from his petrified stance, the man swung on Corporal Chase, who immediately managed to catch him by a wrist and _twist_ ; Turnbull wasted no time going in for the other one, but before he got it, Chase and the man went to the ground, a boot hit the side of Turnbull's head, and the other boot sent that little boy stumbling, screaming; the man wrestled and more blows were exchanged; the woman screamed louder about her son and finally, still raging, the man was restrained face-down on the ground with Chase holding a knee into his back and Turnbull wrenching the other arm out from under him in order to cuff him.

It all happened in less than twenty seconds.

The boy was sobbing.

"You're under arrest for assault causing bodily harm and obstruction." Chase was panting as he wrenched the man up, still fighting even while cuffed. "You are not bound to say anything. You have nothing to hope from any promise of favor, and nothing to fear from any threat whether or not you say anything. You have the right to retain and instruct a lawyer, without delay. You have the right to immediate legal advice from duty counsel by making a toll-free call to a number that we will provide to you. Anything you do say can be used against you as evidence in court. Do you understand? Do you want to talk to a lawyer?"

The caution was delivered evenly, and the man snarled back, "Fuck you."

 

 

Turnbull wasn't sure when the world went skewed. It wasn't his head; he knew where the bruises would be, and could feel the scrape from a boot heel just under his ear, but none of that accounted for the feeling of _wrong_. He did not quite remember taking statements. He knew he did; his own handwriting told him he did. But he didn't quite remember it. All he really remembered, after chaos broke, was a little boy sent sprawling at the end of his own father's boot. Everything else felt disjointed. He couldn't understand. It was not his first relatively violent call, and it was not his first tussle, but it was the first time he felt so _thrown_.

It surprised him, after the man was in a holding cell, after all arrest procedures were over, that his hands were shaking quite so badly as that.

He stared down at them for a long moment.

"He'll be all right," Chase said, leaning against a desk, holding the ice pack away from his busted lip long enough to say it. "Physically."

Turnbull blinked once or twice at his own hands, then looked up, trying to process the words. "Sir?"

"The kid. He's shaken up, bruised, but he'll be all right."

The boy had just witnessed his father slapping his mother, fighting with the police and then found himself sprawled and bruised upon the ground. Turnbull could not, for the life of him, figure out how 'all right' could remotely apply. His jaw knotted as he stared back at his FTO, and he was only aware of that his hands had become fists when Chase flicked a look at them, then back up to his face.

The surge of _anger_ caught his breath short. "He is not all right." It was the closest he had ever come to insubordination here, and Turnbull didn't care.

"Physically," Chase said again, lowering the ice pack and regarding Turnbull carefully. "Physically, he'll be all right."

There was another long moment where Turnbull breathed, shoulders tense and jaw knotted, trying to... to...

Trying to what? Calm down? He found he didn't want to. Everything he did want to do involved going into that holding cell and visiting every slap back upon that man, who would hit his wife, hit his child, who would attack his own family and... and...

He dragged in a couple of breaths, determined to pull himself together; Lord, the last thing he needed or wanted was to have his FTO looking at him as though he was a moment away from snapping a man in half, or breaking in half himself.

"You can't," Chase said, face grim, as he stood and headed for the small refrigerator. As though he knew exactly what Turnbull was feeling in that moment; the sudden realization that Chase likely _did_ made a spike of anxiety flare up in the midst of the anger. Chase just rummaged around for a moment, coming up with another ice pack. "I know everything in you wants to, but you can't. It wouldn't do any good, Turnbull. It wouldn't make any difference. You'd hurt yourself far worse than you'd hurt him, because he's _not going to change_. Not when he goes before a magistrate and ends up serving a sentence, not when his wife finally gets her head together and leaves, and not when a Mountie finally snaps and can't take seeing him treat his family like that and hands it back to him in spades."

Turnbull had no answer, and Chase didn't wait for one.

"We can put him away for awhile, we can hope that being apart from him lets his wife find her feet. We can refer her and the boy to counseling, we can take them to shelters, we can respond quickly and decisively when we're called out to things like this, but what we can't do is force people to change. All we can do is care, and keep trying, and every once in awhile, we can make enough of a difference for the better." Chase held out the ice pack, not breaking eye contact, face still serious. "We can't force him to change. Don't give him the power to force _you_ to."

Turnbull finally took the ice, the anger receding to a sore ache that made his chest hurt, far from where he'd actually been struck. After a few breaths, too ragged for his own comfort, he went and sat down at his desk to work on the report, occasionally remembering to hold the ice against his face.

They said nothing more about it for the rest of the shift.

 

 

Guy had apparently found the ability to walk; he was sitting outside of the house in the twilight, unaware of the fact that Turnbull's landlady was obviously watching him intermittently from the window, perhaps expecting him to break in. Turnbull had no particular desire to see the man, as he trudged up the walk, steps heavy, but he stopped anyway. His face was distantly sore, but the beating he genuinely felt was all internal.

"What happened?" Guy asked, standing up and hefting a broom over his shoulder.

No part of Turnbull wanted to talk about it, and so, he didn't. After a moment, he nodded towards the broom. "How was it?"

"Fine." Guy offered the broom over.

Turnbull nodded, carefully taking it and feeling the familiar shape and weight, no less familiar for the sheer amount of time since he had last been curling.

At least something, in this moment, felt right.

He didn't give the broom back when he walked the rest of the way up the steps and left Guy outside to drift wherever Guy would end up drifting.

Somehow, he got the feeling that Guy didn't mind.

 

 

It took a number of days, and a conviction, before the soreness faded entirely. Corporal Chase didn't bring up Turnbull's reaction again, but he did go over procedure for domestic violence calls, and he did reaffirm what their duties were in those situations. They mapped out all counseling programs and shelters nearby, they requested the latest literature printed by the Crown, they made certain to have the most up-to-date knowledge and it...

It helped. It did not take away the sense of wrongness that Turnbull felt about that particular call, but it helped.

"You curl?" Chase asked, one afternoon before the shift started, spying the broom in the backseat of Turnbull's car.

"Ah... not these days, so much, sir." He had been playing around on the sheet with Guy earlier, though, the ice having been maintained after the summer bonspiel to allow a youth program to practice. It had felt good. "Do you?"

"Oh, yeah." Chase nodded, heading for the door, grinning. "Maybe I'll see you on the ice this fall."

Turnbull was relieved to feel his own grin, as he followed, holding the door after Chase. "Perhaps, sir."

"Ready?" Chase asked, and the tone suggested that it was more than a simple inquiry to determine whether or not Turnbull was literally ready to go out on patrol for the afternoon.

It took him a moment to answer, but Turnbull meant it when he answered, "Yes, sir."


End file.
